


And I'll Learn From The Landscapes That Everything Must Change

by andyouknowitis



Series: The 'And...' Series [6]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 19:00:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10882992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andyouknowitis/pseuds/andyouknowitis
Summary: These kisses are like memories, a play of a tongue across his lips has him seeing dark nights in Princess Park, while a nibble on his jaw takes him back to their first trip to France, a kiss to his eyelashes reminds him of an early morning in Milan, while a press of lips to the corner of his mouth shows him moonlit washed nights from their private house back home. Deeper still as a tug of his lip shows him places that they never shared with anyone but each other, places that promised of a respite from the sentence of separations, a refuge from the tense words born of weary stares. Two mouths, wrapped up in one love. All of these places, like frames filled with photographs, of every place that they have touched, in all the ways you can. Louis clings to Harry's shoulders and it's like the ghosts of kisses past play through him, until he remembers how to move his lips again, to give pleasure as well as take of it, relishing in the taste and smell that is only Harry, in all that keeps him holding on, in what reminds him of who he is. Of who he loves. And why.





	And I'll Learn From The Landscapes That Everything Must Change

_2017_

You crave noise to break the silence.

Because silence can break you when it's just you and it alone.

There isn't a gift you can give, a hug that you can take, a word that you can write, that means anything but this. This lives with you when everything else is gone.

It will live with you, this shadow friend, for all the days that remain. It wants quiet. You want noise.

*

“I'll keep moving, if you keep moving.”

“I know.”

And so it is, spots across the globe, scattered hours, chasing noise. The heal of London rain, the balm of Jamaican sun, the movement of miles quiet like a history under rug swept.

*

You sleep in, when you can sleep at all, but really time lacks movement now, so the time is just your time, another day to live through.

But there is coffee.

You bring him coffee. He brings you hope.

*

Harry rolled his shoulders as he sat up in bed, hands greedy for the cup being extended to him. “Mmmm. Evil caffeine. I like it.”

Louis' eyes smile even if his mouth doesn't. “And people think I'm the coffee fiend.”

Harry just smirked as he took a long swallow, his words a whisper of _too hot but I don't care_. “My nefarious plan all along.”

“Coffee creeper.”

“If the cup fits.”

Louis shook his head. “It'll fuck up your voice you know.”

Harry stuck out his tongue and blew on his coffee before replacing the lid, head tilted considering. “Kettle black looks good on you.”

Louis sat back down on the bed beside him, burrowing back under the covers in a way he rarely did these days, watching as Harry sipped from his cup with relish, shorter hair messier than before, bits stuck up on the side and back as it was, the longest parts reaching out into new curls. He thought, as he often did, that Harry was indeed, a beautiful noise.

Harry swallowed, pulling his legs up beneath the covers so he could rest his cup on his knees. “You're doing it again.”

“I know. But you're never quiet.”

Harry fiddled with the coffee lid. “Too much?”

“Just enough.”

Louis knows he doesn't have to say more, the silence that lives between them is not a quiet one, it never was. It's the space that the already spoken lives in, no vowels or consonants needed, a conundrum that was long since solved.

Sometimes he has an idea in his head of a simpler time, but memory is no measure of the truth. There is only today and the hours that come next. Some days the emotions blur beneath filters, some at his own hand, others chasing the numb of their own accord. Other times he clings to anything he can feel, even if it's rage, or anger. Sometimes especially so.

Harry knows. And he is there.

The urge sweeps through him like waves meeting the sand at a half term in Scarborough. Rolling through him, letting himself be swept away. And his eyes speak what his lips can't.

Coffee is set aside and Harry moves down to face him, his face on the pillow across from him, fingertips stroking Louis' left wrist softly. All he says is “I'm here.”

*

He wants to make noise. To make Harry's skin shout out loud. To chase the music of light upon the shore.

He needs the breaths caught heavy from kissing too long but unable to let go.

He longs for it all to stop.

*

So he needs the noise, he needs the noise.

The soft swish of the duvet across his skin is a rumble swept around him. Breaths beneath a bed sheet. Tangled and close and unquiet. Harry's mouth sings of coffee, Louis' tongue revels in the sharp taste in soft spaces. He gives a gasp of unfiltered sound as he presses too hard and too quick.

He cuts himself off and his head hits the pillow, his breath shattered with those splinters in his mind. “I'm sorry.”

Harry just takes his hand, palms large and humming around Louis' own and holds it close to his chest. “Nothing to be sorry for. You're sad.”

“I'm-”

Harry doesn't raise his voice but Louis can hear the shift in tone anyway. “Over half a decade, Lou.” He smooths his thumbs around the thumb of Louis' hand, soothing and steady.

He doesn't argue. Not this time. They've fought this argument too many times, of the importance of sharing the load, of not being alone when they're a pair. Louis stares at their hands and tries again. Eyes seeing easier beneath the light softened by the sheet that swims around their heads. “I just don't want to hurt you.”

Harry scoffs. “Yeah, because I'm such a fragile flower.” He squeezes his hand this time. “Like I couldn't kick that arse of yours if I wanted.” A lame attempt at an eyebrow. “And it's such a nice arse too. Shame.”

That does make him smile. Just a little. The ' _As if, Styles'_ goes unspoken but like so many things it no longer needs to be said. He wishes the smile was the only thing he needed. He wishes that he could explain that _'I don't want to hurt you'_ is beyond physical. That even though they've explored each other's bodies through the years, at times playful and punishing, just the marks upon their skin is so far from what he means. That he is terrified that the well of pain will rise up and make him disconnect. There but not there, desperate to touch the only emotions he can reach, but so frightened of damaging the ones that he cherishes the most. The ones he tended. And let grow.

Harry's voice is steady and sure. “You won't.”

He blinks because even then it's happening, and it hurts. He's babbling words. Here and not here. He clings to the anchor of Harry's voice. The patterns soothing. The cadence known.

Harry waits until Louis can find his eyes again and he repeats those words. “Louis, you won't.”

“How do you know?”

Harry lets him feel his heartbeat then, softly encourages him to match their breaths, to hold to his rhythm, before he speaks again. “Because I hear you.”

*

What it is to be heard in a world that has the sound switched off. Pictures telling unsacred stories, platitudes tipped into your ear, and everything is stop and go, no wait and rest.

He cannot wait and rest.

Too many things and too much asked for and needed from him. He needs to. He needs this. A way to make the world loud again, when every other part of him is muted.

Harry is still holding his hands, a soothing rhythm played against his skin, his words a steady song. “Tell me what you need.”

The question has so many answers and his mind can't find the words to form even one of them. “I...” He stutters to a halt.

His breath feels like it's choking him and his eyes find Harry's, desperate to communicate all the things he wants to say.

Harry draws him close, gently, so gently that it wants to make him weep again, and fuck he feels like he has no more tears to cry any more, wearing his anguish as he is. But then there is the brush of soft, well loved lips against the corner of his eyebrow, the softest murmur of 'Okay, baby, okay.' and he knows from times past that it means that Harry will take him steadily and slowly unless he signals him to stop, or changes the pace himself.

There have been times when he's been numb to anything, even to being held, weeks when all he wants is to burn himself out in a fever against Harry's back, and those times, like now, where he wants and doesn't want all at once, needing but unable to take. And they've found some shorthand that works them through this new aspect of them. For now. _Now,_ he thinks cynically. As if anything may ever be the same again. There is no more then. There is only now.

And right now Harry's mouth is softly traversing across his skin, in slightly different places from those well loved and learned. As if somehow the smallest changes will affect an awakening in his senses. Anything so he's not just going through the motions. Those lips he knows so well mouths messages against his underarm, soft nuzzles and licks that faintly tickle. There's a soft but sharp lovebite laid upon his bicep, followed by a soft kiss against his inner elbow, and his mind stirs at the unfamiliar sensations. He feels the brush of their cocks against each other, through their boxers, barely hard, just a presence felt, like a nagging itch. Harry looks up from his ministrations, with a murmur of 'Alright?' as their eyes meet again.

Alright? Could anything ever be alright again? Alright is a distant stranger to him now. Living a life of too much; too much asked of him, too much taken away, pushed further and further from a world where anything was ever all-fucking-right. Anger bubbles through him in a bitter rage, his hands tremble as he flexes his fingers, fingers that feel like they belong to someone else. He aches for the steady scenes of his childhood, a world away from here. For a place where his only worry was a sandwich he could afford after a weekend whiled away with friends, and learning his lines for a school show. Time has been stolen from him, along with so much else.

Harry's eyes remain steady on his, not touching beyond where their limbs are pressed against one another, just waiting. This boy he met on a day that feels like a lifetime ago. Now a man that he shares his life with. It's to both of them that he speaks now. “Just kiss me please. Kiss me until I can forget.”

Harry's small smile is an ache against his heart, but he complies with what Louis asks of him. Because he's Harry, and if there is anything on earth he can give him, then he will. He shifts them both a little until they're on their sides, cradling Louis close, fingers soft against his neck, taking control so Louis can relax into it and just be. Just feel. Harry's fingers trail soft patterns down his back, brushing back and forth lightly from the curve of his hip and back again, when Louis shudders against him, breath stuttering on a softly exhaled sigh. Louis leans into the touch, chasing the spark of a different kind of hum in his blood. Something, anything.

These kisses are like memories, a play of a tongue across his lips has him seeing dark nights in Princess Park, while a nibble on his jaw takes him back to their first trip to France, a kiss to his eyelashes reminds him of an early morning in Milan, while a press of lips to the corner of his mouth shows him moonlit washed nights from their private house back home. Deeper still as a tug of his lip shows him places that they never shared with anyone but each other, places that promised of a respite from the sentence of separations, a refuge from the tense words born of weary stares. Two mouths, wrapped up in one love. All of these places, like frames filled with photographs, of every place that they have touched, in all the ways you can. Louis clings to Harry's shoulders and it's like the ghosts of kisses past play through him, until he remembers how to move his lips again, to give pleasure as well as take of it, relishing in the taste and smell that is only Harry, in all that keeps him holding on, in what reminds him of who he is. Of who he loves. And why.

*

He doesn't lose track of time, so much as he's aware of it ticking away, but comfortable to just be here anyway. His head laid against his love's shoulder, his fingers stroking Harry's wrists as a way to ground them both within these savoured moments. They don't need words but he gives them to him anyway because sometimes he forgets, and all too often he loses them, and he's learned in the hardest of ways that the days that he can say them are not infinite, even if the feeling is.

“I love you.”

Harry cuddles him close his response soft but strong. “And I love you.”

They say nothing more for a while, and he dozes a little, his body clock, if it was ever in order, has long since given up the ghost. Sleep has long since been ephemeral. Some days he'll try and help it there, more still he'll just stare at the sunrise, shadows playing against the past. But now he is comfortable, and warm. Safe. He is safe here.

Eventually there's the dull roar of his tummy rumbling, and Harry pats his thigh and tells him he'll go get them breakfast, or lunch, or whatever it is now. He watches him tug on his dressing gown and leave the room, after pressing a soft kiss to Louis' brow. And he languishes in the knowledge that this man not just loves him, but knows him. Tattered edges and ripped seams all. He's his Harry. Lover. Friend. And superstar. A hint of a grin. And frankly a really great fucking kisser.

He didn't make him forget. He did something better. He helped him remember. Remember the rise and fall and the tumult of living and loving. Of who they were then, to who they are now. And he can see it then, like a landmark in the distance, of who they'll be next. Perhaps the picture's hazy, subject to the changes of an inclement weather, and those who will pass through leaving marks on the horizon, and his eyes are too tired to make out more than shapes and suggestions of what these pictures will come to be. But it's familiar and steady with room for something new. The world will keep on. And so will he.

He feels a smile tug at his mouth as he hears Harry call out that this place has an empty bloody fridge yet again. He tugs on a hoodie and follows the somewhat irate voice into the kitchen and finds Harry tapping through the delivery app on his phone, muttering about omelettes. Louis wraps his arms around him and nicks the phone, flicking through to his favourite pizza place, even though he knows that Harry knows he didn't eat much yesterday, and that means Louis should probably eat something halfway decent with protein in. Nonetheless he is unrepentant. “You want eggs, I'll go half on a Fioretina, but that's my final offer.”

Harry just closes his hand over the phone. “Louis.”

Louis huffs then, no heat in it, “It's got spinach on, don't nag me.”

Harry grins, and suddenly he can see one of those new pictures right then as it becomes a downright smirk, “I already ordered it.”

And he laughs. He really laughs for the first time in a while. And those pictures grow clearer now. Memories waiting on the edge of their lifetime.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Like many things, I've had the seeds of this in my mind for quite a while, I just couldn't quite find the words for it until today. I've only specified the year for this one because it's about how (when faced with extreme grief and stress) sometimes your entire being loses swathes of time, and days roll one in another until it's just measured in the smallest steps from opening your eyes, to talking yourself into the next thing and the next. There are many ways through it; the good, the bad and the ugly, but it is something that you can only endure through until you learn how to carry it. For there is nothing else but to keep on being alive. In the words of my favourite Slayer, _'Life is not bliss, life is just this..it's living'._
> 
> The softest of inspirations drawn from kd lang's album _Ingenue_ , particulary _Wash Me Clean_ and _Outside Myself_.


End file.
